I have .26 Bitcoins from before the Bitcoin Cash/BCH/BCC fork spread across 10 denominated paper wallets so my pre-fork private keys are in plain sight. (I also have 1.86 bitcoins on Trezor, but I'll leave that out since I can't "see" the private keys with my own eyes).
Exercise A, transfer from wallet to wallet:
These steps can be done with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash/BCH/BCC, or any peer to peer coin that uses private keys. I will use BCH in this example.
- Identify the wallet/public key you want to transfer your BCH to. This could be a friend's wallet, a store, another BCH wallet your own, or a new wallet you or someone else generates.
- Give your BCH private key to an online service that accepts it. (luckily I have a .01 paper wallet worth $27 to test with). If you're using BTC, the wallet service that accepts private keys is blockchain.info. If you're using ETH, the service is myetherwallet.com.
- Once the internet wallet shows the balance from the private key, send the entire balance to the target wallet address from step 1 above.
Notes on BCH: Before testing with a pre-fork, dual private key, you may want to transfer out your BTC first so the BCH service doesn't get value from your BTC private key. Also be careful not to send BCH to a BTC address or the receiver won't get the funds. 1 above: I'm not aware of anyone that will trade me any service for transferring to a BCH address, this includes exchanges. 2&3 above: I'm not aware of any online wallet service that accepts BCH private keys.
Exercise B, Trade BCH on an exchange:
- Log into any exchange you have a balance on, trade BCH on the exchange.
- To get your BCH out, see Exercise A, Step 1 above. For now, exchanges have disabled this for BCH.
Note that exchange companies don't buy and sell coins. They enable their users to trade easily by adjusting the price up or down so the end result is no actual coin movement for the exchange. For instance if an exchange like Bittrex or Kraken has 10,000 BTC and now 10,000 BCH, this means they have the private keys for both in the same way as I do with my paper wallet or Trezor. As exchange users "trade", no coins are moving. If some users want to trade BTC for BCH, there have to be other users wanting to trade BCH for BTC at the same price. If all users wanted one or the other, then the price drives up or down until the users change their mind and it stays in balance. No matter what the users want, the balance at the exchange would still be 10,000 BTC+10,000 BCH in this example. This goes for trading BCH at any volume and any price.
Because exercise A:1,2,3 above doesn't work yet for BCH, no exchanges are transferring in or out BCH. This means the exchange quantity of BCH is "stuck" at 10,000. You can trade all you want, but for now you can't move it and the exchange doesn't care. You are trading other users and paying them a fee on each trade. The exchange wants to enable deposits+withdrawals of BCH so they can get more fees for that.
Once the issues of A:1,2,3 above are solved with BCH, then the exchange holders of BCH would be able to transfer it out. Right now, no one can transfer out BCH from exchange, paper wallet, or trezor to my knowledge. I haven't tried the full node or mining software from bitcoincash.org yet, so maybe that works. For now I don't plan to try it.
When the exchanges resolve steps A:1,2,3 above, something big for the BCH price will happen. I'm guessing it will go down, but it doesn't matter since I don't plan on trading any BCH. I plan to leave it where it is on my paper wallets and Trezor.
Save your coins,
RayMetz100